CODENAME: MIDAS
The companion piece to 'Bloodlines'
MONTE CARLO, MONACO
The party was an endless, churning mass of human bodies, many half-clothed and sweaty under the flashing strobe lights of the outdoor discotheque in the hills above Monte Carlo; in their drink-induced frenzy of dancing, the revellers barely paid attention to the magnificent view they were afforded. Alcohol was being doled out in untold amounts; all the better to line the pockets of the casino hosting the spontaneous festivities.
Tracey Ho moved through the celebration with a steadfast single-mindedness; she was there for one reason, and one reason only. To have a good time.
She was ready to let her hair down; to enjoy the night, to pass the time until daybreak with this throng of people, most of whom hooted in French, with a healthy mix of Italian and Spanish speakers thrown in for good measure. To her, it didn't matter. A language was a language, and she could speak all of them.
"Hey!" one man cried, a healthy, blonde specimen, who grabbed her hand, and pulled her into the horde of revellers. She danced, free for the time being, and anonymous, just another Asian visitor to the party capital of the Mediterranean.
She was short, slender, her eyes bright and intelligent, her straight, black hair hanging to a spot just above her shoulders. She was clad in a slinky red dress, and she carried a tall martini in on hand, her other curled around of the hip of the rather attractive Spaniard that had pulled her into the mosh. "You speak French?" he shouted in broken English.
Tracey answered him in flawless Spanish. "I could speak in any language you wanted."
The man flashed perfect teeth.
Hours passed under the strobe light, the loud, pounding beat of the dance music resounding through the night air, as Tracey finished her second martini and dumped the empty glass on a table.
Finally, exhausted and parched, she extricated herself from the throng, and dragged herself over to the bar. She signalled to the barman, who nodded back, holding up a finger, mouthing 'One minute'. Tracey leant against the bar, and she felt something buzz in her handbag, clutched in her martini hand. She unzipped it, and buried her hand into tiny red silk thing, removing the vibrating BlackBerry from its clutches.
She glanced at the screen. One new message. She opened it, and her face, flushed with the dancing and drink, changed in an instant.
The party was over. She was back at work.
T – Sorry to interrupt Monte Carlo partying. Need you in Poland, ASAP. Follow up on target Codename: MIDAS. Real name: 'Burak'. More information on its way – from LA, BW.
Tracey wanted to sighed, but she suppressed the urge. She slipped the BlackBerry back into her handbag, and clasped it, swinging it back into her hands.
"What can you get you?" the barman said, flashing his pearly whites.
"Nothing," Tracey answered, her French as good as her Spanish; it was if she had come out of the womb speaking it. She didn't even have to think about it; the language just came out, without mistakes, without even a pause to think of the right word. It just came to her.
"Hey, miss," the Spaniard she had danced with earlier that night said, sidling up to her. "Come back to the party. Drinks are on me."
Tracey giggled, and pulled the man into a brief, passionate kiss. They separated and she smiled winningly. "Not tonight. I have to be in Poland tomorrow. But thanks for the offer. You made me feel more alive than I have in months." She paused, throwing back her head in joyous laughter. "And I probably won't feel this alive again for a while."
She kissed him again, hungrily.
In the sky over Monte Carlo, fireworks burst into life, brilliant plumes of red, blue and gold. The Spaniard turned, eyes wide with wonder, and he laughed.
Tracey slipped away, stealing into the night.
WARSAW, POLAND
Compared to Monaco, Poland was cold. Really, really cold. Tracey Ho had spent the morning on a flight from Monte Carlo to Warsaw. The information Brendan had promised had come just as Tracey was boarding the plane; it had brought her a sharp rebuke from the air stewardess showing her to her first class seat.
She was to go to the Grodzisk Mazowiecki Branch of the Poland State Archives in Warsaw, and talk to the head archivist, a man named Jan. Jan would take her to the emigration files of the Burak family, who had fled Poland in 1977, to get away from crushing Soviet restrictions.
Brendan knew their names, where they had come from, where they departed Poland from, and how to locate information on them. He just didn't have that information, including the most important piece of information. That is, just where the youngest of the Buraks was. Designated codename: MIDAS by Louise Greenland in 1980, she'd been identified as a Carrier of the Gene, as Tracey herself was. Her ability was unlisted, though evidence existed that Greenland knew what it was.
The taxi cab pulled up out the front of the imposing facade of the Grodzisk Mazowiecki Branch, and she handed the driver a fistful of zlotys, sliding out of the car, into the cool midmorning air.
The cab sped off, rejoining the thick flow of traffic.
She could speak Polish as naturally as she spoke Spanish, or Italian, or Xipaya, an endangered language from the jungles of Brazil spoken by, at last count, only two other people on the face of the planet; two elderly women who lived in a tiny village somewhere in the Amazon. She wasn't able to pass her gift on, the limits of her ability preventing her from teaching a language.
Each language she encountered was like an extension of her own psyche.
She pushed her way through one of three revolving doors that lead into the massive archive building. The door swung open into a cavernous marble-floored lobby, a massive Polish flag hanging on the far wall above a bank of elevators.
"Miss Ho?" A rickety-sounding voice, in the brusque, guttural strains of Polish, drifted through the stale air of the lobby.
Tracey came eye to eye with the source; a slouched old man, walking with a cane. "Yes," Tracey said with a smile, absent-mindedly tugging at the sleeves of her leather jacket. "I've come to meet with a man named Jan in regards to the Burak emigration file."
"I am Jan," the old man said, without offering his hand. "I am chief archivist. Your Brendan Wunderlich contacted me two days ago. I have the Burak file in one of our examination rooms. If you'll follow me, please."
The man moved surprisingly quickly, despite the cane, and led Tracey through a maze-like system of subcorridors to an empty viewing room within five minutes. The only pieces of furnishing in the empty, brightly light fluorescent chamber was a metal table, and a small wooden chair. The table was covered with dusty files and papers.
Jan chuckled, shuffling away. "Have fun."
It took hours of trawling through piles of documents, written in Polish and Russian; dull documents tracing dozens of families Burak as they tried to get away from the overpowering spectre of Communism. It was a good thing that written languages were as easy to understand as spoken ones; the words simply jumped off the page, into her mind, where the meanings became clear instantaneously.
Then she found it; a file pertaining to a family of five. They'd been wealthy landowners before the Nazi invasion, and had regained their property by the time of withdrawal. Then the Soviets came, and the family, mother and father, plus three daughters, the youngest of which had been named Helen, had become desperate to flee Poland.
Tracey's eyes were stinging from hours of going through records, but she couldn't tear her eyes away. Somehow, the Buraks, who had had nothing at this point, had been able to bribe someone high up enough to secure exit visas for themselves, and they'd gone south, settling for a time in Valencia, Spain. That's where the trail went cold in these files. The zloty had been worthless. Really, the only thing that could have gotten them out of Poland was...
"Gold." Tracey whispered.
Codename MIDAS? Could it possibly be?
VALENCIA, SPAIN
Tracey was ecstatic to be back in the sunshine again; Poland had been the very image of a stormy-skied, frigid land, although Tracey had heard it was a beautiful place. Just not when she was there.
Valencia, on the other hand, was gorgeous.
Orange trees lined the streets, all medieval Moroccan-style architecture, left over from the days when the city had been a Moorish stronghold. The symbol of Valencia's long and turbulent history stood just outside her cab's window as they sped past, bound for the local branch of the Spanish national archives; the Torres de Serrano, the ancient gateway to Valencia. Built of powerful, unyielding stone, the gateway watched over the city like a restless, majestic sentinel.
Brendan had fed her additional information, mostly about Greenland's interactions with Codename MIDAS, but Tracey hadn't read any of it yet. She was more interested in just finding this Helen Burak, as per her mission.
She didn't need to know much beyond the woman's location to do that.
Finally, the cab pulled up out the front of the local archival repository, a majestic old Moorish building overlooking a fountained plaza in the heart of Old Valencia.
She paid the driver and entered the building; almost immediately a helpful attendant whisked her away to a viewing room as different from the one in Poland as night was from day. The room looked friendly, well-used; it was basically an office, with arch windows overlooking the plaza and a comfortable feel.
Still Tracey didn't much like the idea of fishing through all those records; people by the name of Burak who had immigrated to the Valencia area around the time the family Tracey was searching for.
It took hours once more; the sun was starting to sink behind the window, but finally, Tracey found them. The Buraks had arrived in Spain after a month spent in Germany. They'd stayed in Valencia for a year, rich enough to purchase a huge mansion on the outskirts of the city.
They'd been on a family holiday in the Pyrenees when they'd suffered a catastrophic car accident. Only one member of the family had survived. The youngest daughter, Helen, twelve years old at the time.
And, according to the newspaper articles grouped in with the files, she hadn't left the mountains since. Tracey knew exactly where she'd be going next.